Jerry Brown’s veto of SB 104 which would have implemented card-check unionization for California Farm Workers, enabling workers to get union representation with majority support to prevent employer delaying tactics (dragging out legal maneuvering to prevent a quick election while they bribe and intimidate workers) is shocking to some. The “some” people that it’s shocking to are those who’ve bought into Jerry’s mythology about his record.
Most people, including Latino politicians and labor leaders, gave Jerry a pass when he broke the Arizona boycott immediately after taking advantage of their support to win the governorship, as I pointed out at the time:
http://janbtucker.com/blog/2010/11/18/arizona-to-boycott-or-not-to-boycott/
I did not give Jerry a pass then and I’m sure as hell not giving him one now. Yet, I’m not shocked in the least.
In 1974, when Jerry was running for Governor for the first time, I was following him around in his Los Angeles campaign appearances. At CSU Northridge, at the Valley Independent Democrats meeting in Panorama City (at the old UAW headquarters), and at a campaign appearance in Sherman Oaks, I personally heard him take three different positions on abortion, each tailored to the audience he thought he was speaking to.
It’s important to remember that in 1974, Jerry Brown was not the darling of the liberals in the Democratic primary. The real progressive of the time in that race was Bob Moretti, Speaker of the California Assembly. Bob was a great representative (I lived in his district and his staff was responsible for finding the clerical error in processing that had resulted in the initial denial of my application for the California State Scholarship, without which I couldn’t have gone to CSUN). Bob’s daughter was, like me, a member of the Peace & Freedom Party in those days.
The candidate that was Jerry’s de facto running mate in 1970 (for Lieutenant Governor), who thankfully lost the primary to Al Alquist while Jerry was running for Secretary of State was none other than Judge Robert A. Wenke. Wenke did not disclose when Jerry Brown was a defendant in Blaine vs Brown (which eventually became the 9-0 Lubin vs Panish decision of the United States Supreme Court overturning Wenke’s decision that poor people had no right to run for office) that he was a campaign contributor to Jerry’s campaign (of both cash and an airline ticket). During that campaign, Jerry also failed to disclose the precise value of the corporate in-kind contribution of space for his Los Angeles campaign headquarters in 1970, listing it as “somewhere over $500″ in spite of the legal requirement for full disclosure. Of course in those days the Fair Political Practices Commission didn’t exist and as Secretary of State, Jerry didn’t enforce the law against himself after he won the office.
Just to illustrate the difference between Jerry’s hype and Jerry’s performance as Governor from 1974-82, just look at what he didn’t do for California’s mental health system. Under his predecessor, Ronald Reagan, the mental health system had been cut to the bone financially, which began the uptick in homelessness for mentally ill people in California. When Jerry was elected, people expected that those heartless funding cuts would be reversed, but Brown would have none of it. The mental health system continued to suffer from inadequate funding, while homelessness got worse. It wasn’t even a fiscally sound policy because it was a lot cheaper to treat mentally ill people in hospitals than it was to deal with them on the streets, with the accompanying costs that were added to hospital emergency rooms, social service agencies, and police departments.
So, am I shocked that Jerry Brown just shafted the United Farm Workers? I’m about as shocked as Captain Louis Renaut was in Casablanca to find out that gambling was going on in Rick Blaine’s Café Américain, immediately before accepting the night’s winnings.
